1.4.1 Using the OneGeology Portal

1.4.1.1 Viewing map data registered in the OneGeology Portal

The OneGeology Portal is found at: http://portal.onegeology.org/ and is accessible as either an English (the default) or French language service.

You will need to use Internet Explorer 6 and above, Firefox 2 and above or recent versions of Safari, Opera, and Chrome. You will need to enable JavaScript and allow pop-ups.

When you open the OneGeology Portal you get a map of the world, the Blue Marble: Next Generation+Topo+Bathy (Terra/MODIS)(http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_detail.php?id=7105). By default you now also get some automatically selected geology map layers, depending on the scale you are zoomed into. For example, at full map extent you now get the ‘World CGMW 1:50M Geological Units Onshore’ map.Default display of the OneGeology Portal, with automatically selected geology layers

You may at any time turn off the automatically selected layers by unticking the option ‘Automatically displayed layers depending on scale and location’ in the top right of the browser window.

The overview window in the bottom right corner of the map indicates the area of the globe you are currently looking at in the map window, by means of a red outline map superimposed on the global map. For example in the above map the red outline is shown for the whole globe, but in the below map the red box is located in the Southern Ocean.

The overview window shows where you are on the globe

Add OneGeology map layers icon

To view any other registered geology maps you need to click on the ‘Add OneGeology map layers’ icon to open the OneGeology Portal catalogue listing.

OneGeology Portal catalogue map layers listed by Geographic area. Use the options in this window to control which maps are displayed, and how they are displayed

Click on the + buttons to expand the levels. Select a map by clicking on the box to the left of the map you wish to view. A tick will appear.

Select all the map layers you wish to view at this time before closing the catalogue listing. The selected maps should then be visible. You can add other layers later on if you desire.

You may navigate around the map using the GIS tools found at the top of the page. The functions of these tools is as follows (from left to right):

GIS tools

Zoom in — click on this image and then click on the world background map to zoom in centred on the clicked location. Click and drag a rectangle to zoom to a specific area.

Zoom out — click on this image and then click on the world background map to zoom out centred on the clicked location. Click and drag a rectangle to zoom out from a specific area

View full global extent — click this image to start again with a view of the full world background map.

Pan by clicking and dragging the map to move — click this image and then click and drag on the map to move to a different area (north, west, etc)

Return back to previous map view

If you have gone back to a previous view, you may use this tool to go forward.

Use this tool to get more information about the active map layers (this is termed a GetFeatureInfo request). Select the tool and click the map to open up a new window with detailed information about the geology at that point. The information returned and format of the information varies from map to map and layer to layer dependant upon how much information the provider organization wishes to display and the capabilities of the service.

Example of information that may be retrieved using the information tool

Active Layers Properties icon

To view metadata about the map layers and to change the way the layers are displayed you need to Click on the ‘Active Layers Properties’ icon. This will open a list of all the map layers that you have selected to be viewed in the OneGeology Portal; it will now also display all the map layers that have been automatically selected.

Active layers in a OneGeology Portal session

Within this dialogue menu you can manage the individual layers in the following ways (looking at the icons from left to right):

Tools to manage the active layers

Move the map layer up (so it lies above other layers and may obscure them), and move the map layer down (so it lies beneath other layers and may be obscured by them). In the figure we can see that we cannot move the SUR TNO 1M SLT further up because the up away is greyed out.

Show or hide the map layer.

Change the opacity of the map layer (use the slider rule to change the % value to make underlying maps visible) so that it is possible to see through a layer to underlying layers where they overlap

Zoom to the extent of the map layer to make that particular map layer fill the centre of the map browser.

Delete the map layer from the view (you can add it back again later).

Note the i icon has no actual function, it just exists to inform you whether the layer is queryable, that is whether you can perform a GetFeatureInfo request on it and get back some information. Note too, in the above figure that one of the layers is shown to be greyed out. A greyed out layer indicates that the layer (such as PER INGEMMET 1:1M Faults, is not visible at the selected map scale. Finally note we can show or hide all the automatically selected layers by unticking the ‘Automatically displayed layers depending on scale and location’ option at the top of the dialogue window.

Layer viewed with 30% opacity

Layer viewed with 100% opacity

Comparison of layer opacity

To find out further information about any map layer you can click the arrow to right of the layer title; inforamtion found here is extracted from the service GetCapabilites response document and includes information such as:

The data owner

The service title

The legend of the map layer

Information about the layer data and other digital data services of the data provider

TC211/ISO 19115:2003 or FGDC metadata for the layer

The service URL (you can use this URL to view the OneGeology WMS layer in any WMS client as described in later sections).

Example of GetCapabilities data that may be obtained from the Active Layer properties dialogue, with pop-up legend from the Legend link

This (above) information is harvested automatically by the OneGeology Portal client software from the GetCapabilities response document of the WMS.

Go To

The Go To icon

Click on the Go To (compass) icon to open a dialog box that allows you to zoom to an area by place name or Longitude and Latitude coordinates

In the first example (below) we enter Dominica in the ‘Localisation by Name’ text box, then click the ‘Go to’ button to the right of it. This opens a second window that shows all the matches for Dominica in the OneGeology Portal gazeteer. Select the place name you want by clicking on it and the OneGeology Portal will zoom to that location. Note the OneGeology Portal only zooms to the area, it doesn’t necessarily open any available geology layers in that area.

Using the Go To functionality to zoom to an area (the Dominican Republic),
by entering a search string ~ Dominica

In the second example (below) we use the ‘Localisation by Coordinates’ form and enter 172.85 in the ‘Long:’ text box and -43.73 in the ‘Lat:’ text box and then click the ‘Go to’ button to the right of them. The OneGeology Portal will then zoom to the area of interest. Note the OneGeology Portal only zooms to the area, it doesn’t necessarily open any available geology layers in that area. In this example we already had the geology of New Zealand as an active layer.

Using the Go To functionality to zoom to the area of Christchurch, New Zealand,
by entering the Longitude and Latitude ~ 172.85, -43.73

Viewing layers in different projections

The portal allows you to select other projections to view the map layers. The projections supported by the portal are:

The default projection to view layers in the portal is 2D Latitude / Longitude (WGS84) or EPSG:4326. All layers in the portal must support this projection as part of their service. To select another projection you must use the list at the bottom of the main portal window. The current projection is shown in bold in the list, so for example in the below figure the active projection at the time of clicking the list was NSIDC Sea Ice Polar Stereographic North (WGS84).

Projections are selected from the list at the bottom of the main portal window

Whilst all layers in the portal must support 2D Latitude / Longitude (WGS84), other projections are optional. When you choose to change to any projection other the default, you should expect that some layers will not support the newly selected projection; layers that do not support the selected projection are deselected (so the portal will not make any requests to them for map layers) and shown in the active layers properties window with a yellow warning triangle.

Active layers that do not support the projection are deselected and shown with a warning triangle

In many cases viewing the OneGeology layers in the default projection is sufficient, but in some cases, for example when you are dealing with layers close to the poles, a differnt projection better shows the data. For example compare the two images below showing map layers for Antarctica and surrounding regions. In the first example we have the default projection that shows Antarctica as a distorted strip of land at the bottom of the flattened globe.

In the second example, we have the same map layers shown in the Antarctic Polar Stereographic (WGS84) projection that shows Antarctica as it should be, as a single land mass. Note that the portal uses a different backdrop for this projection than that used for the default projection, namely the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA). Note too that this LIMA backdrop does not extend much further than the Antarctica land mass, so whilst there are map layers that support this projection other than Antarctica, for example the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) layers, there is currently no backdrop for these map layer extents.